In the Eye of the Beholder
by Ms. Videl Son
Summary: OneShot. “I don’t like my glasses because I think they make me look...,” he paused to take a deep breath before saying the final word. “Nerdy.” Newlywed fic, GhVi. For texaspeach.


**Title:** In the Eye of the Beholder**  
Disclaimer:** Meet me behind the WalMart at eleven-thirty. Bring cash.**  
Rating:** R ( M ) – mostly just to be safe, but keep an eye out for sexual references.**  
Spoilers: **They lived happily ever after.

**Summary:** OneShot. "I don't like my glasses because I think they make me look...," he paused to take a deep breath before saying the final word. "_Nerdy_." Newlywed fic, GhVi. For texaspeach.

You know what they say about men with big glasses...*wink, wink*

--- --- ---

"You know, I'll bet you'd be able to see that better if you'd put your glasses on."

"_Wah_!" Gohan exclaimed as he toppled over backwards, bringing his chair down with him. The book he had been squinting at flew out of his hands and hit something behind him with a loud thunk.

"Gohan-kun!" cried a voice of concern as a pair of hands descended and lifted the back of his head off the linoleum. They cradled him gently, wary of the tender lump that was forming beneath his unruly hair. "Are you alright?"

When the demi-Saiyan smarty pants opened his clenched eyes, the concerned face of his new wife came into focus. Despite having been together for nearly four full years already, Gohan couldn't help still blushing sometimes when he did something stupid in front of her. If the spreading heat in his cheeks was any indication, this humiliating little event would be no different. "I'm fine, Videl-san," he claimed, lifting his throbbing head out of her palms and sitting up under his own power just to prove it to her.

"I guess it's a good thing you inherited your father's thick skull after all," Videl said, tipping back into a more comfortable position that allowed her to sit on the heels of her feet. Though her expression and tone were teasing, Gohan could tell that she was relieved by the way her chest heaved in a sigh. That made him smile a little.

Laughing a little at his own expense, he readily agreed with her. "Yeah, I guess so."

Leaning forward to balance herself on her hands, Videl crawled across the kitchen floor towards him on all fours and stopped when she had successfully reached his awkwardly seated form. Her expression twisted into one of more obvious concern, she lifted her face to his and stared him directly in the eyes (as she was prone to do whenever she seemed to suspect that he was lying) and asked, "You're sure you're okay?"

Gohan, feeling decidedly lucky to have a bride willing to use interrogation tactics on him just to assess his health, bestowed her with a sweet kiss before answering. "I'm perfect."

Videl's frown flipped into a smirk at that. "Then why can't you remember to put the toilet seat down?"

"Mostly perfect," he amended, leaning in for another taste of his wife's lips.

To his disappointment, Videl used his own chest as leverage to push herself away from him, palms flat on his pectorals even when she was settled her preferred distance away. "You wouldn't have fallen if you had been wearing your glasses, you know."

"What makes you say that?"

"Uh, because you were holding your book so far away from your face that you actually toppled over backwards," she pointed out, a "duh" implied in her tone.

"Actually," Gohan began, adopting the know-it-all voice he tended to use in his classes. "That was _your_ fault. You startled me."

Withdrawing her hands from his chest so that she could place them on her hips instead, Videl countered his logic with a bit of my own. "If you hadn't been leaning back so far in your chair, you never would've fallen over. All _I _did was break your concentration."

Crap, she had him there.

After a few long seconds without a reply, Videl, apparently, realized the same thing. Sighing again, this time in exasperation, she asked, "Why don't you just put on your glasses when you read? You're going to injure more than your thick skull if you don't."

"I don't want to," Gohan replied, somewhat petulantly. He crossed his arms for further emphasis.

Videl's eyebrows drew together as a frown formed on her lips. "Why not?"

"I don't like them."

"That's it?" Videl queried, raising one of her brows out of its scowl incredulously. She wasn't buying it, he could tell. "_That's_ why you're okay with reading a book from across the freaking room?"

The fevered blush was back, causing Gohan to avert his face from the confrontation at hand. "I..." Gosh, he couldn't tell her the truth. Not when exposing it meant revealing to his new wife that he was a sissy dork. (Wives didn't divorce their husbands just for that, right?) "Just...don't."

"Stop being so evasive, Gohan," Videl commanded, leaning down so that she could look him directly in the face again. Quickly, he swerved his gaze away from hers, fearing that he might just wet himself if he were to be so daring as to stare directly at the bea – er, his wife."You know I don't like it."

Uh-oh. It was never good when she dropped the honorific. "I – I wasn't being evasive!"

"Yes, you were!"

"Honey..."

"Don't you 'honey,' me, Son Gohan!" Oh, gods. If the loss of an endearment was bad, Videl calling him by his full name was worse. That meant he either had to come clean or sleep outside for the rest of the week. "I want to know what it is you're hiding from me and I want to know it _now_!"

Clinging to the vain hope that he could still weasel his way out of this situation with his pride intact, Gohan chanced a peek at his wife's face.

Nope, nothing doing. She was giving him _The Look _now.

So much for saving what was left of his suave facade. "I don't like my glasses because I think they make me look...," he paused to take a deep breath before saying the final word. "_Nerdy_."

Videl blinked once. Twice. "Is that all?"

He was blushing again, he just knew it. And he was starting to get a little light-headed because of it. "Y-Yeah...I just...don't want you to see me like that, is all."

"_Pffffft_!"

It belatedly occurred to Gohan that he should have been offended when Videl started laughing uproariously at him, but it somehow slipped his mind as he watched her literally collapse onto the linoleum as her mirth overwhelmed her. In fact, by the time he had gathered the presence of mind to get annoyed by her teary-eyed amusement, she was beginning to wheeze words at him. "You...can't be...serious...ahaha...!"

"What's so funny?" the humiliated demi-Saiyan eventually demanded of his giggling spouse, head bowed against the onslaught of merriment. He could practically feel his wounded ego bleeding all over the kitchen by this point.

After a few long seconds, Videl calmed herself enough to answer him. From her position splayed out on the kitchen floor, she turned her head so that she could look directly at him as she said, "N-Nothing...it's just...Gohan-kun, you _have_ looked at yourself in the mirror lately, haven't you?"

On the bright side, she was back to referring to him by his affectionate title. On the other, he was more confused than ever. "Yeah...why?"

"Haven't you..._noticed _anything about yourself?" she asked, obviously hinting at something that eluded his brilliant mind.

He blinked once. Then again. "Like what?"

Sitting up, Videl crawled toward him again and placed her hands on his shoulders. She adopted a mock-serious expression and, speaking to him as if she were revealing a hard truth, his sweet little bride informed him, "Gohan-kun, you don't need glasses to look like a nerd. You _are_ a nerd."

Well, the former superhero-turned-research scientist was a little baffled by the news, to say the least. Him? A nerd? It wasn't possible. "What are you talking about, Videl-san?"

"You're...a..._nerd_, Gohan-kun," she repeated, emphasizing each word slowly as if her husband was four-years-old (well, a four-year-old that didn't happen to be a half-alien genius, anyway).

Ouch. That stung.

Gohan turned away from his wife again, troubled by this abrupt (and unfounded, in his opinion) revelation. Was that what she really thought of him? That he was an uncool doof? An _embarrassment_? Maybe she really would divorce him, then...

"Gohan-kun?"

Gohan didn't reply or even raise his eyes to her. He couldn't look at the woman he loved knowing that she thought he was the one thing he didn't want her to see him as. Gods, how had he never noticed before...?

"Gohan..."

What did she want a dork like him for, anyway? She could easily dump him and find a man who was manly and cool. Not only was she smart and beautiful and funny, but she was also a _celebrity_. Hardly a month went by while they were dating that she wasn't given an offer of marriage by some hunk or another...Videl said that they were all glory-whoring idiots, but at least they were _cool_.

"Son Gohan! Look at me _right now_!"

Out of pure reflex, Gohan jumped to do as he was bidden, lifting his gaze to meet Videl's so fast that something in his neck popped. "Wh-What?"

Instead of giving him The Look like he was expecting, Videl bestowed a gentle kiss upon his lips. Withdrawing her face from his just enough to speak, she whispered "I'm sorry" against his skin.

Gulping, Gohan replied, "F-For what?"

"For hurting your feelings," she said, nuzzling his cheek with the tip of her nose. "I didn't mean to. I thought that you knew you were...y'know."

As a new wave of dejectedness washed over him, Gohan filled in the blank for her. "A nerd, you mean?"

"Yeah, that."

"Don't worry about it," he said, doing his best to inflect indifference as he spoke. His voice began to crack under the strain. "I mean, it's the truth, right? It's not your fault that I'm...the way I am. Gosh, you're practically a saint for putting up with it. What with having to be seen with me in public and – "

Videl interrupted his trembling speech with another kiss, this one much harder and forceful than the last. She gripped his face between her hands to hold him still as she inserted her tongue into his mouth and climbed into his lap. She seemed to be using all of her strength to hold him to her, but Gohan was doing his best to hold back to keep from crushing her against his chest at the same time. He never wanted to release her, not if it meant she could get away.

When Videl pulled them apart, it was only so that they could both revel in the sweet intake of oxygen that eluded them while they were together. After the minimal amount of time required for him to refill his lungs, Gohan moved in for another kiss, desperate to adhere himself to his wife.

Before he could reestablish their connection, however, she put two fingers against his lips to block him. "Gohan," she whispered, her breathing still shallow and gasping. "I don't 'put up' with you. I _love_ you. I love you just the way you are."

Comforted though he was by her words, Gohan couldn't allow himself to believe her. Not just yet. "You do...?"

"I wouldn't have married you if I didn't."

"But...," Gohan began, pausing to wet his throat with a deep swallow. "Aren't you embarrassed? By me, I mean?"

"Not even a little," Videl assured him, resting her forehead against his and closing her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, "Besides, I think your nerdiness is kinda cute."

Gohan's heart skipped over one of its beats at his wife's newest confession. He hardly dare hope to believe it. "Really? You do?"

"Yeah," she replied, smirking a little before brushing against his lips with her own. "You've got that sexy mad scientist thing going on. I think it's hot."

"Hot?"

"Yeah."

All of a sudden, Gohan felt like a stud again. Who cared if the rest of the world thought he was a dorky loser? His wife – the most beautiful and accomplished woman he'd ever met – thought he was _hot_! A sexy mad scientist; he could learn to like that title.

"So, Gohan-kun," Videl said, bringing his wandering attention back to her. She had _That Look _– not _The_ Look, but _That _Look; the one he liked (a lot) – on her face and his physical reaction was instantaneous. "If you put your glasses on right now, we can play 'mad scientist and lab assistant.'"

Oh, yeah. He could learn to like being a sexy mad scientist _a lot_.

—

Sometime around twilight that evening, Gohan and Videl were finished with their romp around the house and settled down on the dining room table. It creaked beneath them every time one of them shifted their weight, but neither husband nor wife had the energy to get out from underneath Gohan's white lab coat (which was serving them as a makeshift blanket) to find a more secure place for their slumber. Thus, on the feasting surface they stayed, slightly cold but satisfied with the afternoon's events.

"Gohan-kun," Videl whispered against her husband's bare chest, snapping him out of his half-asleep state.

Looking down, the demi-Saiyan prodigy observed his wife beneath heavy eyelids. He smiled as he realized that she was still wearing his glasses. "Hm...?"

The spectacles began to slip down her nose as she asked, "You're not going to make me go to that stupid convention-thingie with you this year, are you?"

"No, why?"

"Good," she said, exhaling deeply with relief. "I was afraid you'd think I find your _work_ sexy, too. Honestly, I'm not as thrilled by biomechanical engineering as you are."

"Mean," he accused with an insincere frown. A moment later, he smiled again and reached down for a kiss.

Leaning up to meet him halfway, Videl opened her mouth to invite his tongue inside, sparking a new chemical reaction within her husband.

When they broke away, Videl assured Gohan "Always," before flinging her leg over his hips and hoisting herself on top of him.

Before the heavy fuzz of sexual passion shorted out his thought processes, Gohan made a mental note to place an order for a new table in the morning.

— — —

**Author's Notes:** ...they've got terrible eyesight.

Terrible jokes aside, this was my little way of explaining how/why Gohan wears his glasses all the time at the end of Z. Sure, maybe he needs them to see (like I do** n.n**; ), but I like this reasoning better, don't you?

Anyway, since texaspeach (who placed second in the fanfiction section of the September contest on SweetestIrony) didn't have any specific requests for her prize fic, I decided to finish up one of my older ideas and dedicate it to her. I know that she's technically only entitled to a drabble (only first place winners get full fics), but...eh. I don't have a problem bending the rules once in awhile. Besides, now I don't have to think of a new idea off the top of my head **n.n** This was more for my convenience than her satisfaction, if you want to know the truth, hehe.

Oh, and the original idea was inspired by something that actually happened between me and my fiancé, Nic (aka, htmLord). Some of you may know this already, but I've got a nerd fetish and my darling Nic fits that description to a T, thus I used to wear an "I Love Nerds" bracelet on my right arm (until it broke and fell off, anyway). His little sister (Taylor, who I think was about nine or ten at the time) saw it and commented, "You like nerds?"

"Yep," I said. "I do."

"Does that mean my brother's a nerd?"

"Yep," I said again, trying hard not to laugh this time. "It does."

That's right, ladies and gents, I revealed to my fiance's sister that he's a nerd. And I'm so proud of myself for doing it, too **n.n**

Un-beta'd.

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .**_

– _Who's your daddy? GohanVidel._


End file.
